


Reciprocal

by Ais (mikaaislin)



Series: Reciprocal [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon LGBTQ Character, Canon Lesbian Character, F/F, Gen, LGBTQ Character, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:07:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikaaislin/pseuds/Ais
Summary: “What are you doing?” someone yelled from afar.“She’s dead!” Reina yelled back, hearing the frantic catch in her own voice. She desperately moved her hands around the woman, somehow thinking she could bring her back to life if she only knew how. “No, no, she’s dead, she’s dead, oh my god— Check the driver!”She distantly heard a commotion but couldn’t pay attention to it. Somewhere even further in the distance, sirens blared. Reina twisted around toward the sound, hoping to see how far away it was, hoping somehow the EMTs could work a miracle where she could not.Someone was standing behind her.Reina was startled, seeing first the legs and feet. She was about to look up when she realized this person, this bystander, had the damn audacity to pick up the woman’s dirty boots from the ground and put them on. What kind of lowlife—





	Reciprocal

The bus rocked as it rolled over a pothole. Like everyone else, Reina had her earbuds in while she stared at her phone, thumbs absently flicking their way through the newest app game. She didn’t need the earbuds; she had no music playing, and the bus as a whole was almost uncomfortably quiet. But she needed them for armor, for protection against the casual blade of a stranger’s inquisitive mind.  
She was still trying to find her new normal but she thought she’d found the balance, as long as she didn’t think.

Someone in the back turned on a video and didn’t have their jack plugged in properly. For a few seconds, she heard the garbled sounds of a woman cheerfully greeting the viewers before the voice cut out. Reina ignored it, like the rest of the passengers. 

Battle done. Next enemy on screen. Did she have enough power or was she going to have to fail out of this level and start with a different configuration?

The bus rocked again, this time around a sharp turn. Reina’s arm pressed lightly against the wall.

Reina hadn’t paid attention to anyone else the whole time on the trip; she kept her eyes downcast and only saw others in her peripheral vision. She knew a woman was sitting next to her but hadn’t bothered to get much of a view of her other than a nice yellow sun dress she wore under a bronze bomber jacket. The shoes were the strangest part; a pair of dark boots that looked expensive but were inexplicably dirty. Like she’d walked in mud, maybe. The jacket was cute, and Reina thought once or twice about asking where she got it, but that would require breaking the commuter silence with a real voice instead of just a tinny one echoing from a speaker.

Not worth it, she thought. Just play the game ten more minutes, and her stop would be close enough that she’d have to put away her phone and pay attention. Construction was a bitch around here, so it was giving her a little more time to play while the bus repeatedly stopped at lights.

The woman in the sun dress reached toward the cord on Reina’s other side, hesitated with her fingers not quite catching, tried a different angle over Reina’s head, and realized she couldn’t reach from her seat without encroaching on Reina’s territory. Reina automatically pulled the cord for her. 

“Stop requested,” the bus announced.

In Reina’s peripheral vision, she saw the woman smile. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

Reina nodded without bothering to reply. 

The bus trundled its way the last half block toward the stop, and pulled to a jerking halt. The doors opened and the woman in the sun dress got up. She stood for a second at Reina’s side but Reina didn’t look up. After a pause, the woman walked to the front and jogged down the steps.

The bus continued to sit there. Reina thought she felt eyes on her and finally glanced up. A couple of people were looking at her oddly, but most people continued to ignore their surroundings. 

A woman in the seat behind her leaned forward and murmured, “Don’t you need to get off?”

Reina pulled out her earbuds. “What?”

“The stop,” the woman said, and pointed at the open doors. The bus driver was looking at Reina in the rear view mirror now, too.

“Oh. No, I just pulled it for someone else.” The woman gave her a weird look, so Reina figured maybe she thought Reina was being rude. “Thanks,” she added.

The bus driver hesitated, then flipped the doors closed and started off. Reina was looking up now, so she noticed the woman in the sun dress standing on the corner ready to cross the street. For some reason, the woman had pulled out an umbrella and had it open despite the clear Autumn day. Maybe she was sensitive to sunlight.

She darted in front of the bus as it started to pull out. Reina sucked in a breath, sitting upright ready to yell out— but the woman appeared on the other side of the bus, running across the street. Reina’s heartbeat shot into overdrive even so, and she turned to watch the woman’s progress even as the bus started off in the opposite direction. The woman made it to the curb safely, and Reina relaxed, watching as she now jogged across a side street. 

A man driving his car down the main road saw the construction and stopped traffic ahead, and suddenly decided to take a shortcut through the back streets. He tore around the corner without looking.

The woman in the sun dress was hit so hard, Reina swore she could hear the meaty thunk even through the windows. She went flying into the air, crashed against the top of the car, and fell to the street. Her umbrella skittered off along the ground. Blood sprayed everywhere.

“Oh my god!” Reina burst out.

The car ran up over the curb and hit a tree. The woman didn’t move. Her boots had fallen over on the ground from where she had been jerked right out of them.

Reina threw herself to a stand, frantically twisting around, horrified by the sight. “Oh my god!” she yelled again, and scrambled over the empty seat next to her. “Someone call 911!”

The commuters around her jerked to attention. The bus driver looked in the mirror. “What’s wrong?”

“The woman! The woman was just hit! Oh my god— We have to help her! Stop the bus!”

The bus driver pulled over and turned around. “What woman? Where?”

“Back there! She tried to cross the street and— I’ll go help—”

Reina ran up to the front and swiped her pass on the reader, too civic-minded even in the midst of terror to forget. 

“What are you—” the bus driver started but Reina was terrified that the longer they waited, the closer the woman would be to dying.

“Open the doors!” Reina pounded on them when they stayed closed. “Open them! Please!”

The bus driver did so and Reina threw herself down to the street, running around the front of the bus and barely waiting to see if traffic was clear before sprinting across the road. She ran as fast as she could back to the side street, a horrible lump growing in her throat the closer she came and the more she could see. One of the woman’s legs was barely attached to her body anymore, and her neck was at an angle that was completely wrong.

“No, no, no,” Reina whispered to herself, hoping against hope that she was okay, that the hospital could fix this, that everyone would be okay.

She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t see another death— 

She nearly fell over herself at the scene, ignoring the man in the car for a second while she knelt next to the woman. Reina hesitated a second, some part of her too scared to touch the woman because it would make it reality, another part disgusted by the blood and bodily fluid everywhere. But the majority of her was too concerned for the woman to care. She pressed her fingers to the woman’s neck. 

All she felt was deathly cold. No pulse.

Her lungs compressed.

_No. No, no, no…_

“What are you doing?” someone yelled from afar.

“She’s dead!” Reina yelled back, hearing the frantic catch in her own voice. She desperately moved her hands around the woman, somehow thinking she could bring her back to life if she only knew how. “No, no, she’s dead, she’s dead, oh my god— Check the driver!”

She distantly heard a commotion but couldn’t pay attention to it. Somewhere even further in the distance, sirens blared. Reina twisted around toward the sound, hoping to see how far away it was, hoping somehow the EMTs could work a miracle where she could not.

Someone was standing behind her. 

Reina was startled, seeing first the legs and feet. She was about to look up when she realized this person, this bystander, had the damn audacity to pick up the woman’s dirty boots from the ground and put them on. What kind of lowlife—

Reina looked up with a glare, ready to ream the person out.

She saw a yellow sun dress first, then a bronze bomber jacket, then the face she’d seen only in her periphery before. A face that also was still lying dead at her knees.

The woman from the bus looked down, her umbrella angled behind her to block the sun, a funny expression on her untouched face. Reina’s breath sucked in; her heart skipped a beat, then went dreadfully fast. They stayed there in that awful silence, Reina far too aware of the fact that the body hadn’t moved from in front of her; that her hand still rested on the dead woman’s shoulder. And yet there she stood behind Reina too, makeup, hair and clothing perfectly done and intact, not a speck of blood on her. She continued looking at her body before slowly raising her gaze.

Their eyes met, and the woman smiled the same sad, small smile as on the bus. “Thank you,” she said, “for noticing.”

Reina’s breath guttered out. “What?” she whispered.

“What are you doing!” the same person from before screamed, getting closer. “Get out of the—”

The woman in the sun dress looked past Reina. Reina turned to look too, just in time to see a car swerve around her. A catastrophe of noise and movement overwhelmed her; the scent and sound of the tires burning as they avoided her; the crunching of metal as the car slammed into the tree; glass shattering and spraying Reina; the horn blowing endlessly. A dead branch from the tree cracking and falling down.

The sight of it getting closer above her.

A scream that might have been hers.

Darkness.

\+ + +

A machine beeped lowly, evenly. Reina heard it far before she could see it, or feel anything. It anchored her and irritated her. She wanted to leave it behind, but it wouldn’t let her go.

Beep… beep… beep…

Somewhere in that nether-realm, she heard voices layering over the machine. Sometimes emotional, sometimes even, sometimes so faint she could barely understand. Sometimes in languages she didn’t understand.

Over time, she learned the contours of those syllables; found meaning in the words. They came and went; sometimes a conversation, other times disconnected.

“So sad,” a woman said quietly. 

“So sad,” said a man.

“She might not wake,” a woman said.

“She will,” came a voice, fervent and furtive. It was one Reina recognized from somewhere in memories she couldn’t access. “I won’t leave her side until she does.”

Beep… beep… beep… 

An understanding of the world slowly returned to her; the concept of the sounds existing somewhere within her hearing, the knowledge she had ears to listen, the memory that she had a body housing her soul. 

She began to feel that body; the memory of fingertips and legs and breath rising and falling in her chest brought to life her understanding that these things were still happening; that she still could feel them. 

She remembered she had sight, but still she couldn’t see. 

She remembered it was dark because she had eyelids blocking out the light. 

She remembered she had to open her eyes to see, but exhaustion weighed heavily on her, and she was drawn once more down into the deep.

Beep… beep… beep…

“What do you think happened?” asked a man.

“Her foster sister told me,” a woman said. “Her girlfriend committed suicide last month. She found the body.”

“And with her history…” the man trailed off.

“That sort of stressor would affect anyone, but her? It must have triggered it.”

“Did she know? I heard she was adopted.”

“Her foster sister said she’d just found her family name. She was going to reach out, right before her girlfriend died.”

“So sad,” the man said. “She probably didn’t even know.”

“We wouldn’t have either, without the name. The records were sealed.”

“Still,” the man mused, “who would have thought that Nev had a child?”

Beep… beep… beep…

Images flickered behind Reina’s eyelids. She couldn’t make sense of any of it at first, but she found words for them over time. Dirty, and blood, and yellow, and umbrella.

A woman in a dress standing over her and smiling. 

Reina gasped in a breath, choking and coughing. Her eyes flew open. White on white on white and nothing made sense and she couldn’t breathe— 

She flailed, pulling at cords and plastic and all these pieces attached to her, tethering her down.

A hand holding still, voices in the background crying out in surprise, the machine going louder and faster, a _beep beep beep beep beep—_

“Reina?” The voice from before, the one she recognized; dragging out all the emotions she’d ever heard into two syllables.

Reina looked over, trying to understand this too-bright existence, and saw her foster sister gripping her wrist with both hands. Staring up at her with tear-filled eyes, snot-filled nose, and lips that trembled.

“Mali?” Reina looked at her sister blankly and then darted her gaze around. The room seemed filled with medical professionals suddenly, too many to make sense for one place, one person. But as she looked she realized no, there weren’t that many, she must have been tired. There was only the one nurse rushing to turn off the alarms.

“You’re okay,” Amalia was saying, tears breaking the surface of her voice. “You’re going to be okay, Reina, I promise.”

Reina half-expected to see yellow around her, a set of dirty boots, but it was only Amalia and the nurse, and now the sounds of people coming down the hallway. 

Yellow.

“Is she alive?” Reina said urgently, memory returning with a vengeance. She grabbed onto Amalia. “Is she okay? I tried—I tried to help her—”

Amalia’s expression froze, and slowly crumpled. “Oh no,” she said slowly, a tectonic shift in her voice. “Oh, Reina, I’m so sorry… Rosa died.”

“What?” A different memory this time, one too powerful and harrowing to even try to remember: cracked fingernails, the blue, the blood, the bulging eyes— “No,” a strength in her voice she hadn’t meant to have, something to overpower those memories and push them aside, “I mean the woman in the dress. On the bus. She was hit by a car. I think… I think she was dead, but…”

But there was something wrong with the woman, wasn’t there? Something that didn’t make sense…

What was it? Hazy images that didn’t fit with each other; something cold and still in front of her but moving behind, and…

“Reina.” The gentleness in Amalia’s voice was another level beyond what it had been before; something heartbreaking, something brittle and careful. She shifted her hold on Reina’s wrist; went from gripping it to sliding their palms together, to interlinking their fingers. She held Reina’s hand as a warm lifeline, and met her eyes with a powerful sadness. She opened her mouth and closed it.

_Thank you for noticing._

Those words wouldn’t leave Reina’s mind. The way they were said, the feeling she had in hearing them, the impact of the woman’s body against the car and the impression she made on Reina’s heart.

She must have died after all. That could be the only reason for Amalia’s hesitation.

“What?” Reina asked through dry lips.

“Reina,” Amalia tried again, her features fighting the emotions Reina could feel trying to take over. Amalia bit her lip, readjusted her hold on Reina’s hand, and clearly made an effort to focus on Reina and not let discomfort shift her gaze. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I… I talked to the police. They told me what happened.”

“And she’s dead?” Reina whispered.

“No, Reina. The woman…” A tighter grip. “The thing is, Reina, there was never a woman to begin with.”

“What?” Reina felt like the world took one step away from her. “No, there was. Everyone was looking at their phones, but ask the bus driver. There was a lady in a yellow dress sitting next to me and she got off at that stop.”

“Reina.” Amalia’s tone was gentle and kind and made Reina feel like none of this could possibly be happening right now. “They did talk to her. She said you ran off the bus and crouched in the street, and caused an accident. You were hurt, and…”

“No. That can’t be. She was there, it’s just no one noticed—”

_Thank you for—_

“I’m so sorry, Reina, but they’ve seen the video. The whole time on the bus and then on the street, you were alone. There wasn’t a woman, and there wasn’t an accident except the one that you were in.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. How could I…?”

The nurse was standing next to the bed, Reina realized belatedly, as were two doctors behind her. They had been watching with their carefully crafted expressions that Reina knew now hid pity. She remembered that look, from the moments she refused to remember of her girlfriend—

No, that wasn’t a path she would take; she was in the here and now, she was sitting in this room, she was listening to this insanity that a woman who clearly had been there wasn’t there. Maybe it was a conspiracy. Maybe the cops and the bus driver were in on it. Maybe they didn’t want the negligence on their conscience, because that construction should have had a crosswalk to give the woman more visibility, and maybe the bus driver wasn’t supposed to let them off right there anyway…

“Reina, we’ve talked to your sister,” one of the doctors said. “I’m sure this is all very confusing for you. But we believe we know what happened.”

Reina couldn’t speak; none of this made any sense, any more than the woman dying but still standing behind her. Maybe this was all a dream.

“She tells us you recently learned of your biological family; that you believe you found the identity of your mother.” 

When Reina didn’t answer, Amalia did. “She did, but she hasn’t had the chance to reach out to her…”

The doctors exchanged a look. 

“What is it?” Amalia asked.

“The name you gave us. We know her.”

“You do?” Amalia asked in surprise, her hand tightening on Reina’s. It was the only thing that tied Reina to the reality of this bizarre dream, that feeling of warmth and connection. “I don’t know if she’s ready to…”

“No, no, we aren’t suggesting Reina contact her. Certainly not now, and maybe not ever.”

“Why wouldn’t she…?”

One of the doctors came closer; knelt next to the bed and placed a hand on the sheets next to Reina’s leg. Reina couldn’t move her gaze away once their eyes met, even though she still felt like her body and mind weren’t quite in alignment. 

“Reina, Dr. Nasin would like to talk to you. Alone. We will all—”

“I don’t need to be alone.”

The medical professionals exchanged looks again. “I really think you might want—” 

Reina felt a flash of her usual self transcend this dreamlike lethargy. “I mean it. Anything you want to say, say it in front of my sister. I give you whatever medical permission you need.”

Another pause, another exchange. Dr. Nasin pinched her lips briefly, as if in thought, and looked at Amalia, who looked back stubbornly. She smoothed the clothes at her thighs. “This is not normal procedure, but these aren’t normal circumstances, I suppose. We wouldn’t normally make a determination based on circumstantial evidence, but…”

“What are you trying to say?”

Dr. Nasin looked at Amalia, looked at the other doctors, looked back at Reina, and sighed. “I’m sorry to have to give you this news right after you woke up, but we discussed it and thought it might be less alarming for you to know right away rather than worry about anything you might see or hear. Your mother, your biological mother, was a patient of ours for many years. She had schizophrenia.”

Amalia sucked in a breath.

Dr. Nasin continued without pause, “Based on what happened, on your words and actions at the scene, and based on your age, we worry that you may be at risk too. The recent stressors might have triggered your genetic predisposition.”

Amalia squeezed Reina’s hand and turned watery eyes on her. The doctors and nurse watched her with that emotionless-but-not look. 

Reina stared at them all. “So you think I’m crazy.”

“I wouldn’t say—”

“Schizophrenia means I’m crazy. That’s what you mean. It means I’m nuts. It means I can’t be trusted and I don’t deserve to be in society—”

Dr. Nasin’s expression tightened. “We would really want to work on the negative connotation you have of the term. This isn’t something you can belittle or dismiss by a word. We’re talking about a human being who is diagnosed with an illness, not someone to hate or fear. _If_ you are diagnosed with schizophrenia or any other illness, it doesn’t affect in any way what you deserve; as with anyone and everyone else, you deserve compassion and kindness and help when you need it. Which is what we are here to provide.”

“But _this_ is crazy, not me!” Reina jerked on her hand but was unable to pull from Amalia’s hold. Her gaze darted all around instead. “This is—this is nuts! You’re saying all this based on some woman I don’t even… I mean, my information could be wrong. I didn’t even reach out to her. I don’t know her, I only have to believe you randomly know her even though… And anyway, she might not be my mother and if she isn’t, all this genetic stuff doesn’t mean anything.”

“You look exactly like her, Reina; exactly like her at your age. And the things you’re saying, the way you’re acting…” The other doctor shook his head. “It’s just like her, too.”

“But that doesn’t even… How the hell would you randomly know some lady I just learned of recently?”

For so many years she had wondered about her family; why she’d been given up, what was wrong with her that her own mother didn’t want her, what she would say when she found her. Dreamed about maybe being long lost royalty, or maybe her mother was an international spy who had to give her up for her protection, or maybe she had died in childbirth and never would have wanted to give her away but had to because she was dead. So many possibilities she had run through in her mind all these years, even when she didn’t want to think about anything. So many things she’d wondered, so many theories she’d had, but never had she dreamed of anything like this.

She’d wanted the knowledge, the connection, but now she regretted ever learning that name. 

After all, what did a mother mean against all this madness?

“When you’re feeling up to it, we would really like you to talk to one of our therapists—”

“I’m not crazy. She was there. I swear she was. She got off the bus and… And she said…”

Dr. Nasin laid a gentle hand on Reina’s shoulder. “The hallucinations feel very real, Reina, but that doesn’t mean they are. But you needn’t worry. If anything, it’s good this came up how it did. We know your genetic history. We can find out what’s happening and whatever it is, we can get you help.”

“No.” Reina tried to pull the cords off her, the lines out of her veins. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t need help. I’m fine. I just want to leave—”

“I’m sorry, Reina.” The doctor stopped her with firm but gentle pressure. “But we can’t let you go. You’re on a hold.”

“A _hold?”_

“We need to evaluate you; to make sure you’re safe for yourself, and…”

 _And safe for society._ The words were not said aloud but they were there, just as deafening nonetheless.

Reina felt a helpless hopelessness rise within her. She looked between all those pitying eyes and felt her own well up with tears. 

“But I want to go home.”

“You can’t, Reina. I’m sorry.” Dr. Nasin stepped back, ignoring the way Amalia sniffled and gripped Reina harder, and how Reina couldn’t stop the tears tracking silently down her cheeks now, too. 

The doctors turned, talked amongst each other about transferring Reina to the psych ward for evaluation, about setting up appointments and looking into medication, and then they were telling Amalia that no matter what permission Reina thought she gave, she might not be in her right mind so Amalia had to go now, too, just until it was safe, just until everything was figured out.

Amalia didn’t want to leave but she did. Holding onto Reina’s hand until they were too far apart; their fingers catching and slipping against each other only to fall away. Her bright brown eyes looking back one more time, her chin quivering with her need not to cry in front of Reina; an expression Reina knew meant her sister would bawling the whole way home.

This was her new reality; decisions made for her because society deemed she couldn’t be trusted.

Because she was crazy.

She’d been wrong before: This wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare.

\+ + +

The buzzing wouldn’t leave her brain. The medication they gave her made her feel off; like this wasn’t her reality. She didn’t want this to be real so she wished it wasn’t, yet every time the meds started to wear off she felt her body reconnecting with her mind, and she focused on her surroundings, and she knew this was her own version of hell.

They told her there was nothing wrong with being crazy. That she was sick, she just needed medication, she just needed to talk, she just needed to learn to cope, and all would be okay. 

Objectively, if this was about another person, she would have agreed. She would have told them not to hate themselves or be ashamed, that it was just the way they were born. The same way she shouldn’t hate herself for being born a lesbian, that it was just how she was and there was nothing wrong with it. For a mental illness, they needed help; for sexuality, they needed to believe in themselves. But either way they craved acceptance, both internally and externally. There was nothing wrong with that; it was all very human.

She would have said that to others, but she couldn’t say it to herself. It was too much all at once; losing Rosa, finding her biological mother’s name, seeing the woman who turned out to be a hallucination, learning her mother was crazy and thus so was she, nearly getting herself killed, being deemed a danger to herself. Being brought to this place, remanded into their custody until they could clear her.

It wasn’t forever, they told her, because it couldn’t be. The law wouldn’t allow that loss of civil liberty for too long, and there were others who probably needed this space more. But the law allowed it for a time, because they said she made that guy crash, and they said they could have criminally charged her but they weren’t going to, all things considered. Since she was crazy now, that didn’t make for good prosecution when she thought she was being a Good Samaritan helping out a crash victim. Stay here, they said, stay as long as we can make you, and the courts will look kindly on you, and you can return home eventually, safer and healthier and not a danger at large.

She had become someone described in words from warning signs.

Danger. Keep Out of Reach.

She sat in a corner of the community room as often as she could, staring at the wall sometimes, staring into her soul many others. She tried to figure out where it all went wrong, and every time it came back to Rosa. Sweet, insecure Rosa. Terrified of being herself, terrified of allowing Reina to love her, terrified of how much she loved Reina in return.

 _Did I kill her?_ Reina had wondered every day since she’d come home to find Rosa’s body swinging in the garage. 

_Maybe I pushed her. Maybe she wasn’t ready._

_Maybe it would have been safer if we’d broken up._

_I should have let her leave._

_I shouldn’t have told her love could overcome anything._

_I killed her._

_I murdered her by loving her._

“Why are you crying?”

It was the old man who came into this room sometimes when she was there; hair white against his deep skin, eyes always searching her out when she wanted to be alone. He was kind but he had to be crazy if he was here. She tried to avoid everyone, so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge how messed up everything had become.

“I don’t want to talk,” she managed. Her throat was clogged and tight, her nose stuffy and changing the pitch of her voice. 

“Come on, now, you know you can talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” and here she paused, because she couldn’t remember what he’d said his name was.

“They call me Jamaica,” he said, “but you can call me Jami.”

“I don’t want to talk to you, Jami. Please, just. Leave me alone.”

He proceeded to completely ignore her request. He pulled a chair over, making a god-awful screech on the floor along the way, and dropped down into it. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and with his kind eyes searched out her gaze once more. She tried to keep looking away. It was hard; his presence felt magnetic, mostly because he was the one person here who kept seeking her out, kept trying to make her talk, kept trying to be there for her even when she didn’t want him to be.

“Why do you want to be alone? What are you thinking, making you cry like that?”

Her breath sped. She felt her own chin and lips wobbling, trying to hold in the pain, the guilt. She stared hard at the wall, focusing on a chip in the paint. 

“You can talk to me. I won’t tell anyone.”

“What do you care? Just leave me alone.”

“Now, see, that’s the one thing I can’t do. Not when you’re looking that sad, like you don’t want to be alive.”

A sob wrenched out of her. She tried to hold it in; gripped the arms of the chair like her life depended on it, and maybe it did.

“Oh, Reina,” he said sadly, and placed a comforting hand on her knee. “It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

“How will it be okay?” Her words were hardly formed in the surge of her tears and the thinning of her throat. She gasped in breath, her body buzzing for a whole different reason now: the summer-charged-storm of withheld emotions and deeply buried grief. _“How?_ I’m here, I’m stuck—” She jerked a hand around then brought it back down to the chair; gritted her teeth and tried to breathe, breathe, but she was so upset it was difficult. “I’m stuck _here_ and I’m—I’m fucking crazy and I don’t have… I don’t have anyone—anything home waiting for me and I… And I just wish, I wish…”

“What do you wish?”

“I wish I’d died with her.” 

The admission made her cry even harder; great, wracking gasps that dragged into ghost-town-lungs and pushed back out like miniature explosions. She curled forward, back curved and arms held tight in against her stomach and she bawled like a child. All the emotions she’d been bottling up, everything she’d tried to ignore or dismiss or forget, everything she hadn’t wanted to be true but was, it all came out with a vengeance. She couldn’t stop crying, and Jami was there, a comforting hand rubbing up and down her back, pulling hair back from her eyes, telling her quietly again, again, it would be okay.

It felt like a portion of forever before she finally got her breath back in her control, until she could see through the tears, and she could find a way to talk again. Jami waited for her, and when she wiped away her tears and snot, he was there to steady her as she sat up. An anchor when she needed something, _anything,_ to keep her from falling right back into that heartache.

He smiled at her, something knowing and sad. “It’s okay,” he said again, and pushed some hair from her eyes. “You’ll be okay.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.” Her voice still trembled, and she just now realized so too did her body.

“You will,” he said confidently. “I know you will.”

She let out a soft scoff and scrubbed again at her nose. “Yeah, right. And what else do you know?”

He studied her. “I knew your mother.”

She pulled back, ready to stand up and storm off, but the way he watched her, the way he didn’t look at her with that pity like the others, made her pause. She glared instead. “I haven’t heard a single good thing about her yet. I wish I’d never learned her name.”

“Don’t say that. Nev was a good woman.”

“A _crazy_ woman.” She gestured at herself. “Like me, apparently. Except worse, if everyone knows her by frickin name in this place.” 

“Nev was a lot of things, but crazy isn’t one of them.”

“Are you kidding me? She was schizophrenic and passed that along to me. I overheard people talking about her; they said she used to go around the place raving even when she was medicated. They said nothing worked on her and she only got worse.”

“Maybe,” Jami said carefully, “it’s because they were medicating something that didn’t exist.”

“I think it’s pretty damn obvious her schizophrenia existed.”

“Why?” 

“Because! Because she hallucinated, and—”

“Reina, if there’s one thing you should know about your mother, it’s this: she was a good woman who tried to help others. Where these doctors think they failed isn’t where they failed at all. They shouldn’t have given her pills from the start; she didn’t need them. Their medication was the only thing wrong with her.”

Reina let out a harsh half-laugh. “How can you say that, if you actually knew her? I barely know anything about her but the stories I’ve heard just from the times people thought I couldn’t overhear… It’s ridiculous the shit she pulled in here.”

Jami looked past Reina toward the open door into the hallway. Reina started to look over her shoulder but he reached out and touched her knee again, refocusing her attention on him. 

“Listen, Reina. Think about it for a second. What if they weren’t hallucinations? What if they really existed, but no one else could see or hear them?”

Reina laughed. “That’s a fucking hallucination, dude. I don’t know what dictionary _you’ve_ been using.”

Jami watched her seriously. “Just because not everyone experiences it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Is the fact you like women not real just because some other women like men or something else? They don’t experience your attraction when they look at a woman, so does that mean you don’t feel that way?”

Reina frowned. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“That’s how people are born.”

“So is this.”

“Yeah, born with a predisposition for insanity—”

 _“No.”_ Jami squeezed her knee and leaned in, his eyes overtaking her soul. “Listen to me. You. Are not. Schizophrenic. If you were, it would be okay. You’d need help, you’d get it here. It would affect your life like this does, in different but similar ways. But you aren’t. Your mother wasn’t. These people, they’ve misdiagnosed you.”

Reina leaned back slowly, a mess of emotions shifting through her; hope and wariness and disbelief. “Why are you saying this? I just started to come to terms…”

 _“That’s_ why. Because I can’t have you believing them, giving up, ignoring everything. Reina, your mother spent all her energy helping those who needed help. The voiceless, the sightless—”

“She helped people who were mute or blind?”

“Not always, but you’re right, that was poor wording.” He leaned back, jaw working, lips turning down. “I mean, people who needed help. And you’re the same way, but those who are drawn to you are going to be different. People who felt different than others; invisible. Outcasts who always felt like they didn’t exist for one reason or another; like no one noticed them, who feel like you will understand.”

_Thank you for noticing._

The woman in the sun dress, the smile, the catch of light on her umbrella. The memory came bidden too quickly for Reina to stop it, even with her fogged up mind. She drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

None of this made any sense.

“I don’t get what you want me to do. How am I supposed to help people like that, especially stuck in here like this?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Reina. You can do some good in here, but you can do even more out there. You need to get out of here. Once you’re free, you’ll feel better.”

“Well. _Obviously.”_

“I mean you’ll be able to accept everything more easily when you aren’t stuck in here, your mind and judgment clouded.”

“Right. And how do you propose I get out of here?”

“Convince them you’re better. Convince them you’re safe.”

“If I knew how to do that, I would have already—”

“I’ll help you. I’ll give you everything you need to know, everything your mother did to get out of here.”

Reina eyed him distrustfully. “What’s with you and her, anyway? Why do you care so much?”

He smiled at her. “Because she was the only one who cared about me.”

“The doctors didn’t?”

“The doctors didn’t believe her.”

“About what?”

His eyes bored into her. “What if they aren’t hallucinations, Reina, but are people who used to be? People who need help moving on, or who need a message passed on to the living?”

She leaned all the way back in her chair and slowly moved her leg out from under his hand. “Whaaat are you talking about? Are you talking about… ghosts?”

“You can think of them that way if you want, or spirits, or a residual soul, or whatever you need. A person who was who isn’t the same person anymore, but who still remains caught in this land. A person who needs someone to notice. Someone to care. Someone to help.”

“What the hell kind of trippy drugs do they have you on, Jami?”

“The woman in the yellow dress was caught in a loop. She was dead long before you met her. She rode that bus over and over, replaying her death, waiting for someone to break the chain. She just needed someone to see her. To know she existed. And you did.”

“What?” Reina whispered.

“Natalie Lindstrom. Look her up later, if you don’t believe me. She died seven years ago. When you see her photo, you’ll know.”

“What the fuck—”

“What are you doing, Reina?” 

Reina jumped at the new voice and looked over her shoulder. One of the nurses stood next to her, that pitying smile frozen on her lips, her hands braced against her knees as she bent over. 

“Oh,” Reina said, too startled to come up with a good cover that wouldn’t make Jami look bat shit crazy too. “Uh. We were just…” She gestured between herself and Jami. “Talking. About nothing. I mean, buses?”

The smile on the nurse’s face held that particular cant that Reina was coming to know all too well. She felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

She shouldn’t have mentioned buses. They were going to think she was regressing or something.

“I see,” the nurse said after a moment. She looked past Reina. “You and…?”

“Jami. I mean, Jamaica. You have to know him.” When she looked at Reina without saying anything, Reina turned to Jami in confusion. “What, do you have a different set of nurses in your wing?”

Jami just watched her and then shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I just needed you to believe.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Reina,” the nurse said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll get you an appointment tomorrow morning with the doctor, okay? I’m sure we can get this all figured out. We just need to change your medication.”

“What? Why?”

“It doesn’t seem to be working as well as we would like, but don’t worry. We can adjust and everything will be fine.”

“Yeah but, why are you saying that? I’ve been fine. I haven’t seen the woman or anything. I haven’t seen anyone. I really think we can keep me at my level and you can just let me go…”

“Reina, do you see Jami right now?”

Reina’s throat closed. The pit in her stomach grew. She turned slowly to Jami. 

“You aren’t crazy,” he told her. “I’m real. Or, I was. Philosophers can debate what I am right now.”

“No,” she whispered but she didn’t know if it was to herself, to Jami, or to the nurse.

“It’s okay,” the nurse said. “We’ll get this all figured out. For now, why don’t we go back to your room? You should rest.”

“No,” Reina said again to herself in horror even as she let the nurse guide her up out of the chair, and lead her across the community room. 

“I’ll be here when you need me, Reina,” Jami called out as she walked away. “It’s a lot right now, I know, but I’ll be here.”

She couldn’t bring herself to look back. She wanted to ask the nurse if she really didn’t see him, really couldn’t hear him, but she knew she didn’t by the look on the nurse’s face and the way she held her so she couldn’t suddenly take off running. 

Crazy.

She was crazy.

They turned into the hallway but Reina still heard Jami’s last shout; words that chilled her to the core:

“You’re going to need me when they come for you! Just like they did for your mom.”

“What the fuck?” Reina jerked out of the nurse’s hold and twirled around, shouting back at the room. “What the fuck kind of— _who?”_

“Come on, Reina,” the nurse said more firmly, putting an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. Let’s just keep walking.”

Jami was standing in front of Reina when she turned around. She jumped, nearly disrupting the nurse’s hold. “What—”

“They aren’t all bad,” Jami said intently, “and they aren’t all good. You’ll have to learn the difference.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Come on, Reina.” The nurse pulled on her, getting her going. Jami didn’t move his feet, but he remained right in front of Reina the whole time they walked.

It sent chills down her spine. 

“There’s a lot you have to learn, Reina. I’m sorry if I scared you. It wasn’t my intent. But I needed you to know we’re real. And I need you to know they’ll be drawn to you. When they come, and they will, you have to be ready.”

“How?”

“You’ll have to learn to help us without letting the living know. They’ll think you’re crazy like they do now. And you’ll have to learn to protect yourself.” She opened her mouth but he held up a hand, shaking his head. “That’s enough for now. I should have left before she came, but I needed you to see that no matter how real we are to you, no matter how real we are, period, they can’t feel us, hear us, see us. And more than anything, I needed you to not give up on yourself. I need you to live, Reina. We all need you to live.”

"Why?"

"Because you can't help us if you're dead. For those of us caught, only the living can bridge that gap.”

"Here we go." The nurse led Reina into her room. "Nice and easy. Let's lay down for now, why don't we? Everything will feel right in the morning."

“And,” Jami said from the doorway, “if you die, I'll never know what happened to your mother."

“What happened—”

“Be careful, Reina. I’ll be back, and so will they.”

“We’ll see you in the morning.” The nurse’s words nearly overlapped Jami’s as she walked to the door. She stopped almost on top of him, completely unaware of how his gaze drilled into Reina over her shoulder. She smiled the smile of the woman on the bus, of the doctors diagnosing her, of Amalia trying to pretend everything was okay, of Jami telling her she wasn’t crazy even when everything else said she was. Her hand shifted on the doorknob and she stepped back. “Sleep tight.”

“Don’t let the bed spirits bite,” Jami said with a flash of his teeth.

Was that a poorly timed joke, or an actual warning? She wouldn’t know, because the nurse closed the door on the only connection Reina had to the living and maybe the dead.

The room fell into darkness and a peculiar, unnerving silence.

Reina had never felt so alone.

**Author's Note:**

> This one was a sudden inspiration I got in October 2017 while on the bus commuting home from work. I thought about how so many of us caught in such tight quarters still do our best to pretend the others don't exist. And how would I know if the person sitting next to me is actually there? Because no one else acknowledges them either.
> 
> This is a serial, or will be. I plan to write more stories with Reina and the people she meets. 
> 
> Full disclosure: I'm not happy with the way the mental health professionals and medical doctors are written in this. I feel like it doesn't feel realistic enough. At the time of writing it, I had to finish it quickly so I didn't have time to make it perfect. At the time of posting it now, I thought maybe it's better to share it as-is so that if anyone reads this who are mental health professionals or medical professionals, or anyone who has experience they want to share in the field - they'll see how it's written, and then will be able to tell me what felt unrealistic and what, to them, feels more real. I would like to edit it to read better eventually, to feel authentic. But for now, this is the best I could do at the time of writing. I hope it doesn't pull anyone out of the story too much.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
